Started the second book in the Lost Empires group of books, Faces of Deception. From the back cover.......

Atreus of Erlkazar

Hidden from his powerful family's enemies behind the hideous mask of his own face. Sent by the goddess of beauty on an impossible mission. Driven to find a way past his own flesh, into a soul torn between destiny and love.

Deep in the ancient valleys of the enigmatic Utter East, Atreus will finally look into the...

Faces of Deception

Return to the Utter East in a new Forgotten Realms story by veteran author Troy Denning! Atreus has come a long way to drink from the Fountain of Infinite Grace. Will the greed and prejudice of others stand in his way, destroying the fountain and its ancient guardians?

Part of the Lost Empires stand alone group of books of which there are 4 total.

From the back cover....

The Lost Library of Cormanthyr.

Is it just a myth? Or does it still stand... somewhere in the most ancient corners of Faerûn?

An intrepid human explorer sets out to find the truth and what starts as an archaeological expedition soon becomes a race against time as an undying avenger is determined to protect the secrets of the ancient, xenophobic elven empire of Cormanthyr.

The Library of Cormanthyr -- is it a myth, or a lost piece of history? A contemporary explorer-scholar sets out to learn the truth, but what starts as a research project soon becomes a race against time as an undying avenger strives to keep the secrets of the elves hidden.

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In other news I am still working on GTAIV of course and I like 50% something percent into it and its still fun. I suppose I could be done if I stuck to the main mission but I do the other stuff too though i will admit I have been ignoring most of my friends in the game as it just gets anoying after while to be taking every one to go bowling or whatever. I would say my only really big gripe with the game is that in some cases they actually took out the full open worldly part of the game as far as the missions are concerned. By this I mean the game during the missions often forces you to do things a certain way like in some mission you have to ride a motorcycle, or the car you parked outside prior to entering the mission disappears as you when you start it preventing you from using. Ah well.

I decided to do an experiment with God of War 2 because I really want to be able to finish the game. So I sepnt $20 for a brand new copy of the greatest hits version and lo and behold it makes it past the spot where my other copy experiences its hanging problem. so now the only issue I have is when I will get back to playing it as I am a little absorved by GTAIV at the moment. So I guess i will go to that after I am finished with the main game of that and am satisified with any fun I can have with it after that.

As for my favorite moment of playing GTAIV so far...

Well for me it was when I jackad a car and the the guy I took it from tried to take it back. That in itself is nothing new as it was in previous games but in this case the guy didn't manage to get me out as I drove off and rather just managed to open the door. The funny part was he hung on though and was dragged for a little bit while still hanging on to the door as I drove.

Anyway,..it was funny to me.

First off I got GTA4 so I am going to start that. I hope mine works well as I am hearing rumors of game freezes though its all just rumors as of yet and more sem to be centered on the PS3 version than the 360. At any rate I decided to hold off on starting Half Life 2 and its episodes since I knew this game was coming soon. I still plan to work on Kingdom Hearts on the side playing it when I feel like entertaining my girlfiends daughter with it. I figure after i am GTA'd out I will move on to the Half Life 2.

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On the reading front I read and finished Dangerous Games....

Don;t know why I didn;t put up a now reading post for it but better late than never. This was the second book in the Nethril Trilogy and I liked it better than first. Here the what the back cover says....

Mages' Games

Netheril, empire of magic, where wizards wield power far beyond the ken of mortal men.

Netheril, where citadels float, magic runs wild, and archmages dabble in games better left for the gods.

Netheril, a place where the barbarian Sunbright Steelshanks soon finds himself an unwilling pawn in a lethal match of wits, wiles, and powers.

Book Two of the Netheril Trilogy set in the Arcane Age of the Forgotten Realms. Upon his arrival in the legendary magical city, the barbarian is propelled into the central conflict of the doomed empire.

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After I read this I of course started on the 3rd and final book in the trilogy called Mortal Consequences.

From the back cover on this one...

Endgme...

The Netherese Empire will collapse in five generations.

A forgotten foe, armed with a hell-spawned source of destructive magic, returns to seek her revenge, and a lost love is found in a most unexpected place.

Against a backdrop of war and chaos, the barbarian Sunbright struggles to carve out a niche for himself - and his people - in a rapidly changing world.

Mortal Consequences follows the barbarian Sunbright as he battles a long-forgotten foe and finds his lost love in a most unlikely place. With the certainty of doom looming over the Netherese Empire, will Sunbright survive to help create a new future for his people?

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So there. You are now caught up on me for right now. Wondering why I haven't been posting much on ther news lately? I don't really know I guess maybe I am in the mood as there has been at least a few stories worth posting on. Tired I guess. I will say this I am still interested in seeing what is new at this years E3 because in case you have forgotten last years shows left 2008 poretty much a mystery if you take out all the stuff we already knew like MGS4 , Spore ect..... You would thing there would be a lot of new things then right because iof there isn;t it is going to be a pretty light holiday day season game-wise and next year will be dead.

Speaking of Spore I still can;t wait for that. In hindsight I do think that game should not have even been shown till this year.

I finished God of War 1 which I bought used and fo rthe most part it worked great. There was a little stuttering during some of the cut scenes but I wiped the disk and they worked fine.

After than I went to Kingdom Hearts which is ok. I seem to rmemeber it got good rating and I decided to check and I think it was in the 8's and even though I haven't played too far into it as of yet I would say yeah I would give it a low 8 I think too. Well maybe. My first issue wiht the game is the controls are crappy. Square made an action game here but left in a lot of thier turn based RPG elements, nothing like having to select items from menu during a battle that takes place in real time huh? The jump sucks and there is platforming in this game so that doesn;t help. The graphics range for cool to just plain ugly. That Gummi ship sequence flying between worlds looks like something worse than things in the 8-bit days and it also controls crappy too. Oh and the game doesn't give you a whole lot of idea of what to do. ANyway, slowly soldiering through it.

After realizing that playing that game would be chore I started of God of War 2 which I am loving. I loved the first but two is alot better which I really didn't expect. Unfortunately there seems to be technical issue with either the game and certain slim line version PS2's from what I can tell. At a certain area in the game I found that the game would hang and not load. and not just in a certain part. You actually go through this area at least wice in the game and I had problems when I first past through. At the time I wasn;t sure what to actually ddo in the section and I ended up dying and when I pressed to start from the last checkpoint the game wouldn't load. When i returned to area later I saved outside that same area. i then did what needed to to progress further. Up head ing the new direction the game pop up loading text which it does every so often and the game hangs and never recovers. Even woeirder if I try to save in the save again it also hangs. All that ads up to technical problem rather than say a scratched disk. The byt the way does have scracthes but they are not that bad and the game has run smooth as silk. At any rate it seems I can progres no further which sucks.

Not what will play next, I guess Half Life 2 though and its episodes which should take up a good chunk of time. Though maybe I will since GTA4 is right around the corner huh?

On the school front I nearing the end of second class in this block with this being the last week. I actually have already finished all the work though so I am just hanging around and have started the reading for my next and last class for this degree already. I only have one class in this block yes so that will make it a little easier. It's Intro to Web Design 2 which should be to hard. After that its like 2 to 2 1/2 weeks off and back to the grind for the Bachelors. Can't say I am looking forward to that though. Probably be too hard for me. Got to try though.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3167296

If you missed it has been announced that Games for Windows Magazine (GFW) is not going to be published any longer. Why is this a big deal you ask? Because GFW is formally known as Computer Gaming World (CGW) a magazine that started in 1981 folks, that is history my friends and it makes this old gamer a little sad.

At any rate the main staff is being kept on to work on the the online only version of whatever they decide to call it now. ( my vote goes to turning it back to CGW byt the way. Before I go I would like to push thier podcast since it is by far one of the most entertaining on net if not the most. You can find it here along with 1uos other excellent podcasts which I mentioned before that if you do not listen them you are missing out...

I would also point you to the CGW Museum here...

http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/

If you go to the galleries section you can download a PDF version of any one of the first 100 issues for a real trip down either memory lane or a t least look how crazy it all was way back then. Beleive me you think there are a lot of games now?!! There was like 50 times more developers back in the day. It was a crazy but very cool time.

Started a new book in a new series

From the back cover....

Wizards Wager

Thousands of years before the Age of Elminster dragons rule the skies over Faerûn, and elves dominate the huge forests that cover the land. Only in the mighty, magical empire of Netheril are men a force to be reckoned with.

Bored and haughty in his midair castle, the Netherese mage Candlemas bets fellow wizard Sysquemalyn that a certain barbarian who has caught his eye can survive the most savage tests his friend and deadly rival can devise. The only rule: The tests must offer the subject some chance to survive, however slight.

Of course, "playing fair" is a concept as alien to the wizards of Netheril as "mercy".

But the subject of their wager, Sunbright Steelshanks of the Rengarth Tribe, has a mind and a will of his own. And Candlemas and Sysquemalyn are not the only players in this lethal game of swords and sorcery...

Discover the Arcane Age of Netheril, the most powerful magical empire in the history of the Forgotten Realms, when a bold barbarian becomes the pawn of quarreling archmages

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I also beat the single player on Call of Duty 4 found it to be an ok game. It did have some very cool parts that was for sure but there is a lot I do not like about it gameplay-wise. As stated the respawning enemies is really annoying. That might have been an accpetable thing in 1990-something but not these days. That was the biggest enjoyment killer in the game for me as it makes cover often useless because no area is ever really clear but for a second that the enemies apparent premonition abilty in that they always knwo where you are. It happens in other games but it is really bad here just try and take out that BMP with an RPG you can be 2 miles away and the thing instantly turns its turrt to fire at you as soon as you pop out to aim at it. If I bothered to write a review I think I would give this one around 7.5 at best. Why? Beacause it really isn't or do anything special. Keep in mind I just came off playing Rainbow Six: Vegas, Portal, Bioshock, Halo 2, Halo 3, GRAW and in the middle of playing GRAW2 leading up to this and every one of those game I found more enjoyable for some reason or another. I mean it isn't a horrible game but the issues it have bother me just that much. Definately not game of the year that is for sure.

Next on the list I think i am going to work on Half Life 2 and its episodes or maybe God of War since I started it a week or two ago and want to finish it and I have GOW2 waitjing after that.

UPDATE : Working on God of War. Impresssions. Its pretty cool but it man let me tell you games on last gen really look last gen on a high end monitor. Big time muddy and pixles. Its also a fairly simple game. It is more moves than I thought since I thout it was nothing but the same two moves over and over when I watched videos of it but yeah there is quite a bit more.

On another note a few months ago I bought two Light On DVD drives for my PC and they the eject mechanisms aren;t working too well as they sometimes do not properly frop the disks back into the tryay before oeing it. I had another Light On drive before this where the door would often get stuck. Lesson finally learned, avoid Light On drives. There stuff is probably the cheapest on the amrket but now you know why. Anyways got two Asus ones on the way as of today. Wnet with them because they usually have excellent quality and the ones they had were SATA.

I finshed Assassin's Creed a day or two ago and I found it to be a pretty cool game. I do agree that the game is pretty repititive because you do the exact same thing in every section of every city but still a decent game. Yoy would have to wonder if they just came up with the modern story as a way to make it so you skip around to location quicker and reset failed missions. I didn;t actually hate the modern times tie in and I think it allows for a better sequel since it allows them a an somewhat different setting rather than just rehashing things over and and over as what often happens in sequels.

I have moved on to Call of Duty 4 now. Yeah,......I spoke about this before but this game is really overrated from what I can see. I haven't played online but the 1 player is pretty boring/annoying. Constantly respawning enemies is a real killer to me. It just lame and doesn't do it for me. Anyways I still plan on playing it through but it does just feel like a chore.

I don;t feel like searching for the link for this but it has been leaked that there is another Sonic game in the works. Wow,.....really? It would be an absolute shock if this were anything but bad at this point. Sega has become the new Midway since dropping out the hardware biz in that they put out almost nothing worth mentioning. Lots of work to do in that company to improve it hats all i got to say.

I haven't done one of these in a while and since the last I have read...

Evermeet: Island of Elves

Baldurs Gate

Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn

Baldurs Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal

and now I have moved on to Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

Which I guess is another sequal to the original Pool of Radiance which just happens to be the first Forgotten Realms novel I read who knows how many years ago. But just to give some reference I decided to get it after playing the game by SSI on my Commodore 64 and I was hooked since then. Anyway only a few pages into this at this point. The previous mentioned books were all enjoyable by the way.

I beat Bioshock finally with the good ending. It was decent and overall i liked the game alot but I reiterate my complaint before that overall the game is a little too easy. I died once and really that shouldn't even had happened as it wa only a matter of me not paying attention to my energy. I think I would like to play through to get the bad ending though I have no idea when I would get around to it. The game ending upo going on a lot longer than I thought.

Still working on GRAW2 with my GF and on the last level which is annoying ther hell out of us.

I got yet more used games but I doubt I will rmemeber them all. GRAW2 was once, as well as God of War 2,...oh and Assassins Creed and I am sure there are others.